On Concrete Thinking and Public Education

Puritanism - The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. - H.L. Mencken

I have the challenging responsibility of trying to teach some very concrete thinking students to think in a more flexible and critical way. Typically I fail miserably and in the process create students who just totally loathe me. There's an old and wise saying that one should never try to teach a pig to sing because it frustrates the teacher and annoys the pig. There is some truth to this.

My college requires that we faculty devise measures to test critical thinking among our students and report our findings. I rarely find much evidence of anything remotely resembling critical thinking in my classes. One of my colleagues, not generally known as being one of our brightest stars, nonetheless was quite insightful in noting that we expect our students to think critically, when throughout their entire lives they have been discouraged from critical thinking by their most revered institutions. Critical thinking is very threatening to our political and religious leaders who do their very best to stifle it.

Demagogue - one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. - H.L. Mencken

What has been troubling to me is that many of these very dogmatic and concrete thinking young people are the very best of students on the tests I administer. This has been an issue that I have tried to resolve in my own thinking for quite some time now. Today, I think I figured it out.

I teach seven classes a semester in a community college. I have hundreds of students, and dozens and dozens of tests. But because of the size and number of classes I teach, and because of the very non-selective nature of the students in my college, almost all of my tests are multiple choice. The multiple choice test requires the student memorize "facts" from readings and lecture, and then be able to recognize these facts when confronted with typical "stem and four choice" tests. No analysis, no insight, no understanding is required. Concrete thinkers are in their element in this type of testing environment, as it reflects their approach to learning about politics, religion, and other social institutions. When I recently told my Sex class that polls show about 80 - 90% of the soldiers in Iraq think they're there in response to Iraq's involvement in 9/11, I was shocked to find my class firmly believed that too - "Well, that IS why they're there." On the same day I was told that it's difficult for people to talk about sex openly because of Adam eating from the tree of knowledge.

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind - that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking. - H.L. Mencken

Consider the students in small classes in selective liberal arts colleges and universities around the country. They actually discuss ideas without resorting to quoting Bible verse as the final and conclusive authority. These students actually have to think about things and be able to defend their positions and, if necessary, change their minds. They take tests that require analyses presented in the form of essay. They are truly demonstrating a "change in behavior as a result of practice or experience" which is the very essence of learning.

Recently two of my colleagues were bragging about how easy graduate school was for them. I couldn't join in their discussions because for me graduate school was the greatest challenge of my life.

My initial thoughts were that this was simply rodomontade on their parts and that graduate school was probably far more difficult than they pretended. But then it stuck me, both of them, one with only a Master's, one with a Ph.D. in a infamously "soft" discipline, were both products of the state educational system. Both are incredibly concrete thinkers for people with advanced degrees, teaching college-level classes.

The difference between the education I got at a nationally recognized university, in a rather challenging subject, and the "education" they got in their state run diploma mills is a difference far more vast than I had previously recognized. I suppose no one, myself included, really expects much more at state funded community college. The state has reaped what it has sown and seems perfectly happy with that result.